Stone Soul

May 12, 2014, made it four days since Jakob’s hat had been reviewed by a music blog and been found wanting. The bitter sting of rejection had since waned, but the memory of the assault on his ego was fresh enough in his mind for him to find himself returned once again to the fantasy of bludgeoning the writer with a Shure 58 microphone. In the sordid scenario, he swung the mic on a chord in the manner of Roger Daltrey—a rock’n’roll David to the writer’s Goliath—and with a scream similar to Roger’s own at the beginning of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fool Again” he’d crush the cranky curmudgeon’s cranium with one swift swing. Mic drop. I’m out.

But as all of the other reviews from the Canadian Music Week performance of his band, Moonwood, were (mostly) positive, he’d decided to chalk the attack on his head-wear up to experience. An experience, he’d since decided, was not unlike the constant pen-lashings which an idol of his had famously suffered for years at the hands of the NME.

“At least now I know how Morrissey feels,” he joked, a few nights later, to his friend James who merely looked at him askance and changed the subject.

Speaking of Morrissey, Jakob felt the singer’s autobiography (which in a brazen display of laziness had been titled Autobiography) would have been a far better book had the author restricted the scope of his memoirs to only stories about cats and birds—all of which were fantastic and touching. But unfortunately the heavy tome was weighted far too in favour of his infamous court cases, vague allusions to romantic trysts (which may or may not have taken place for all the author revealed) and complaints about the petty barbs of music writers. In fact, any mention of the the petty barbs should have been omitted as the constant whinging couldn’t help but insinuate into the mind of the reader the notion that the NME may have had a point all along. Still, anyone looking to purchase a book by the man would have been sorely disappointed if they’d cracked the spine and didn’t hear a single moan escape from the defiantly crisp pages—Ever the performer, Mr. M knew to give the people what they want.

Jakob glanced at the first paragraph of this entry and thought, I should probably delete all that whinging about my hat, but then decided, No, if the writer who’d inaccurately slagged his hat—he’d called it a green straw fedora when it is neither green (grey), straw (rayon/wool blend) or a fedora (a trilby)—aspired to sink to the level of NME or Noisey writers, then some Moz-like whinging was indeed the order of the day. Give the people what they want.

As if with the self-righting swing of a pendulum, the universe of Jakob’s ego sought to balance itself a few nights later. On Saturday the 10th (the first annual National Drone Day) his same band, Moonwood, had somehow been asked to headline the Toronto Drone Day event. Or at least they were engaged to put it to bed. This time wearing animal masksinstead of hats—and was it because of this?—they received the highest praise possible from one member of the audience who said to her friend:

“During that last one I got super introspective and didn’t even know where I was.”

If the bitter, bored and unimaginative writer who claimed Jakob and his cohorts had tried “to abruptly shove the audience into a trance state they hadn’t earned yet” at the CMW show was in anyway correct, then Moonwood had achieved this goal in front of a an audience willing to meet them halfway and who didn’t have rocks in their ears or stones in their souls.